Design of Transport Layer Based Hybrid Covert Channel Detection Engine

Computer network is unpredictable due to information warfare and is prone to various attacks. Such attacks on network compromise the most important attribute, the privacy. Most of such attacks are devised using special communication channel called "Covert Channel". The word "Covert" stands for hidden or non-transparent. Network Covert Channel is a concealed communication path within legitimate network communication that clearly violates security policies laid down. The non-transparency in covert channel is also referred to as trapdoor. A trapdoor is unintended design within legitimate communication whose motto is to leak information. Subliminal channel, a variant of covert channel works similarly except that the trapdoor is set in a cryptographic algorithm. A composition of covert channel with subliminal channel is the "Hybrid Covert Channel". Hybrid covert channel is homogenous or heterogeneous mixture of two or more variants of covert channels either active at same instance or at different instances of time. Detecting such malicious channel activity plays a vital role in removing threat to the legitimate network. In this paper, we present a study of multi-trapdoor covert channels and introduce design of a new detection engine for hybrid covert channel in transport layer visualized in TCP and SSL.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Journa

Dynamic Selection of Symmetric Key Cryptographic Algorithms for Securing Data Based on Various Parameters

Most of the information is in the form of electronic data. A lot of electronic data exchanged takes place through computer applications. Therefore information exchange through these applications needs to be secure. Different cryptographic algorithms are usually used to address these security concerns. However, along with security there are other factors that need to be considered for practical implementation of different cryptographic algorithms like implementation cost and performance. This paper provides comparative analysis of time taken for encryption by seven symmetric key cryptographic algorithms (AES, DES, Triple DES, RC2, Skipjack, Blowfish and RC4) with variation of parameters like different data types, data density, data size and key sizes.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Fifth International Conference on Communications Security & Information Assurance (CSIA 2014) May 24~25, 2014, Delhi, Indi